


A Mad Boy's Love Song

by ladyknightanka



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Character Death, Food Issues, Gen, M/M, PTSD, Post-Hell, Psychological Trauma, Self-Harm, So much angst, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 03:39:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/617662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknightanka/pseuds/ladyknightanka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam is a universe composed of a million shattered galaxies, a billion big bang theories, and nothing is real anymore. That doesn't mean he loves his phantom populace any less. Perhaps he cares a bit too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mad Boy's Love Song

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by Sylvia Plath's _A Mad Girl's Love Song_ , and it's quoted in abundance throughout. It's a very dark fic, but if you venture into reading it, I hope you like it. ♥

-

A Mad Boy's Love Song

-

  
In a college lit class, Adam is first introduced to Sylvia Plath. All of his friends and classmates rave at how deep, how dark, how delightful she was, and they mourn what her depression stole from the world. Adam, however, doesn't get it _._ He _can't_.  
  
He pours over her words with analytical eyes and _doesn't get it_. His father, who'd only visited a handful of times his whole life, has long stopped dropping by. He loves his mother and knows she loves him, but he thinks life must be easier for her with him away at school. Because life...it isn't perfect, so why should he immerse himself into a darker place than what already exists? He doesn't get it at all.  
  
And yet, Adam still memorizes the words, still mumbles them to himself when something bad happens. Maybe that's what he gets least of all. Himself.  
  
Hell happens.

-

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead,” Adam murmurs, skinny knees encircled by skinnier arms as he presses his back into the bedside table between his brothers' hotel mattresses. “I lift my lids and all is born again.”  
  
Sam shoots him a glance, eyes dark like moss, and though he says, “Adam, buddy, why don't you get up off the floor?” he makes no move to force his younger brother. He's learned that lesson the hard way by now. Dean doesn't bother to comment.  
  
Adam blinks at them. “I think I made you up inside my head.”  
  
“No, no,” replies Sam. He tries for slow and gentle, but the words snap out, whip-cracks. His smile is tight and even his dimples are shallow. “We're real, Adam. I'm real. I'm right here.” He holds out a hand. Adam only stares at it.  
  
Dean finally interrupts with, “C'mon, let's just go get dinner before the kid withers away to dust,” to which Sam sighs and relents. Both older Winchesters turn toward the motel room's exit.  
  
Adam watches them for a few seconds longer, and they almost stop at the door, worried he won't follow, but he eventually unwinds his body, painstakingly slow. He allows himself to be herded into the Impala's backseat and starts to hum, battered sneakers propped up on leather, ankles bone-white and bare because he doesn't like socks. Dean glowers at him through the rear-view; Sam glowers at Dean. Neither speak.  
  
Five minutes later, at a nearby diner, the silence shatters like glass. “What can I getcha boys?” a voluptuous waitress asks, bubblegum mangled like masticated muscle in her maw. Her voice and the interspersed pop-pop-pop of her candy make Adam want to hold his ears, cringe, cry.  
  
“Three cheese-burgers and large Cokes,” Sam says. His eyes flit to Adam and his forehead knits together. “You like burgers, don't you, Adam? They're your favorite?”  
  
Adam looks away from Sam. He _can't_ look at him, not when the sky is so beautiful, a twinkling canvass, separated only by display windows from their bodies. “The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,” he mumbles, more to himself than anything, “and arbitrary blackness gallops in.”  
  
“Don't listen to him,” Dean says, before the waitress can begin to look too confused. He leans his elbows forward on the table and smiles sweetly at her, a flirty smirk appended to his full lips. “Can ya do me a favor, sweetheart? Cut one of 'em sandwiches up real pretty, into nice and small pieces.” She blushes pink as her gum, but offers a beaming nod. Upon her retreat, Dean's scowl returns, directed toward his youngest brother.  
  
“What was that?” a bemused Sam inquires, which thaws the harsh expression and Adam's resultant flinch slightly.  
  
Dean sighs and says, “You used to be a picky little shit when you were younger. Smaller portions sometimes helped.”  
  
“I hope it helps,” Sam replies. He can't, however, choke back the quiet huff of laughter Dean's anecdote creates in his throat.  
  
Adam blinks at the sound, but doesn't speak. Their food is soon placed before them. Diced into little slabs and dripping ketchup, Adam's burger resembles charred, bleeding human flesh. It doesn't feel the same, though, a prudent poke reveals. After all, who'd know better than Adam what torn, tortured, beaten, bruised flesh should feel like?  
  
“You gonna eat, kiddo?” Sam asks him, eyes earnest. Dean takes a vicious, vindictive bite out of his own meal, decimates it to nothing in zero to sixty flat. Adam tries to swallow and wet his parched throat, but merely manages to gulp down acrid vomit. He looks out the window so he doesn't have to look at his brothers. Soon, Sam calls the waitress to their table again, defeat etched into the lines that mar his usually youthful face. “Can we get this in a doggie bag, please?” he pleads, except it's not a plea for her.  
  
For her, it's merely a request. Adam misses the desperate gesture entirely. Dean mutters, “C'mon,” slaps money onto the table, and they return to the Impala. There, he says, “You know he's dying, don't you? Killing himself? And what are we supposed to do about it?”  
  
Sam frowns, eyes shiny, but if he responds, Adam doesn't hear it. He sits backwards this time, knee deep in the cushions, so he can watch the diner recede into the distance. “I think I made you up inside my head,” he mumbles into the emaciated arms that cradle his fair fan of hair. They don't feel real, either, his arms; they don't feel like they're his, but nothing's his, is it?  
  
It's fine. He's fine.

-

“Get the brat to bed,” Dean says, the instant they're within the shelter of their motel room. He doesn't move very far away from the door, knuckles white on the dented knob. “I need a drink. I'll be back later.”  
  
“The stars go waltzing out.” Adam acquires his eldest brother's attention, head cocked, before Sam can answer.  
  
“Shut up,” mutters Dean, but it lacks any spite. His broad shoulders droop and his eyes are dull, tired, unpolished emeralds veined with garnet.  
  
Even Sam can tell because Sam doesn't berate him for snapping. “Okay,” is all the middle Winchester says, slouching because he's also exhausted. Once Dean is gone, Sam faces Adam, who sways on his feet purposefully, because it's fun to pretend he's a tree in the wind, blow, blow, blowing. “Bed now, buddy?” Sam asks.  
  
To his utmost relief, Adam nods. He lets Sam sit him down on their mattress, pluck off his shoes and tuck him in. He waits with wide eyes till Sam follows. If Adam is alone in bed, he does everything but sleep. He needs someone and Sam needs him.  
  
They're both awake a while and Dean still isn't back. Sam is the first to give in to his world-weariness. Most nights, he'll recite or read to Adam other poems, happy and sad, long and short, anything but the terrible, tragic Love Song, but Sam doesn't have the energy tonight. Only after his breath starts to whir soft across Adam's face does Adam arch his neck up and smile tenderly.  
  
“I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed and sung me moonstruck, kissed me quite insane.” He looks _through_ his slumbering brother. He's not talking to Sam, really. Strong arms unconsciously wrap around his waist and Adam drops his head atop Sam's chest, allows Sam's heartbeat to be the night's lullaby, but it's not about Sam at all.  
  
He's ready for the world to fall dead now. He's been waiting all day.

-

Lights flash bright and burn through Adam's eyelids. He blinks them open to find _him_. Michael's face shifts continually – from black hair to light brown to blond, from green-eyed to blue, old to young – but he's always beautiful, more beautiful than the familiar greenery around them, the park landscape that Adam thinks he should know yet can't recall.  
  
“Adam,” says Michael, his many faces with their many expressions pained. “I'm so sorry.”  
  
Adam ignores him to twirl round and round in the wind. Is it real? He doesn't know, but he revels in the way it feels like flight. “I fancied you'd return the way you said,” he finally says, because Michael is waiting for him, frozen in place with his fingers reaching out, “but I grow old and forget your name.”  
  
“You're Adam. Adam Milligan, son of John Winchester and Kate Milligan. _You're Adam_ ,” Michael says. Adam stops to smile. Of course he would know the correct answer. Adam would never forget _him_ , but _Adam_ , on the other hand. He's not worth wasting precious memory.  
  
Light shimmers beneath Michael's false skin. It's hard to look at for long, like the unforgiving rays of the sun. It can scorch your retinas from your skull, resplendent and rapacious all at once. Adam loves and hates it. Perhaps that's why he says the one thing that will smart, why he says, “God topples from the sky, Hell's fires fade, exit seraphim and Satan's men.”  
  
Michael retracts like he's been slapped, like something so simple as a slap could harm him. He never liked that stanza in the cage, either. “Adam,” he calls again, but the earth starts to shake. Adam's lips purse as he's jolted awake, taken from the only world he adores anymore too soon.

-

Adam stares balefully at Sam, who is hunched over him. His brother's face pinches in regret, but still he says, “Sorry, kiddo. Dean needs me. I have to go.”  
  
Adam shirks Sam's hand off his shoulder and refuses to get out of the bed. “I grow old and forget your name,” he mutters. It's equivalent to _I don't care_ , but centuries upon lonely centuries deserve to merit such apathy.  
  
Sam draws back with a startled gasp, somehow reading the answer in the stubborn curl of Adam's body. He dredges up a smile, despite affront. “You gonna be a good boy while I'm gone?” he asks. Adam's only response is a darker glare. Under his breath, Sam mutters, “Of course you will,” but it's hopeful rather than confident. He waves and walks backward to the exit, eyes trained on Adam the entire time. “See you soon. Let's hope Dean hasn't vomited all over himself, huh?”  
  
The second the motel room door shuts behind him, monsters start to swarm, jaws parted, wet with saliva, in hunger. Adam observes them till a yawn ripples through his body. He wants to go back. He hugs Sam's pillow to his torso and screws his eyes shut. One minute, five, fifteen. Half an hour passes with no sign of that gorgeous world, its – _his_ – glorious light.  
  
Adam crawls out of bed and drags its tattered, sole blanket with him. It'll keep him safe from the monsters. They lurk at its train, nip, nip, nipping, while he wanders the room, confined to its dirty, yellowed four walls. The first thing he does is pull the bedside cabinet's drawers out. Sam and Dean never bother to set their clothes up inside, but they do tuck their bags in. Adam filters through these, too, and tosses aside flannel shirts, rolled up socks, _everything_. There's not a reason, except the thing clawing at his chest, clawing like the monsters claw, trying to worm out of his throat in a shout. He doesn't want to shout, least of all because Dean will come home and yell at him if he does.  
  
The floor now clothed in his brothers' garments, Adam cases the rest of the room. His eyes fall on a microwave oven and linger. Ovens are bright. You hit buttons and they light up, oh so bright, so pretty. There's a niggling memory, too, that he isn't supposed to touch, never touch.  
  
He tunnels out of the Winchesters' laundry and stands, but gets distracted by the way the glow from the room's single light-bulb halos gold on a butter knife's silver blade, innocuous beside the oven. It's cool and light in his hand, a snowflake in spring and not a snowflake at all. Adam just wants to sleep. Really. Is that too much to ask for?  
  
He ends where he first began, alpha and omega, backed against the room's single dresser, between its double beds, smiling. His quirked mouth twitches, simply twitches, when he drags the dull blade up his arms, short and shallow slices first, deeper and more destructive higher. Vertical, not horizontal. You mean business, vertical. _He_ means business.  
  
Although what he wants, wants so bad, is to sleep, it does the opposite at first. He watches blood well and weep with wide eyes. The change is gradual. His eyelids get heavier, harder to hold apart, telltale signs of _almost there_. He's glad Sam's not around. Almost there, almost to Wonderland, quickens his heart, then slows it down so sweetly, and Sam's sad face would ruin that. Sam would ruin happily ever after without ever meaning to.  
  
Thankfully, it's not Sam who interrupts, at least at first. Adam's head lolls back against wood, and someone else kneels over him – someone familiar, someone he knows and doesn't, someone he's seen talking to Sam though Sam never replies.  
  
“Oh, Sammy will be so heartbroken,” the someone says, laughing like it's the punchline to a joke, hardy-har-har. “Mikey and I broke baby brother. Oh, poor little Sam.”  
  
And then Sam is actually there, eyes huge with horror, large hands ineffective bandages around Adam's slick, narrow wrists. “Dean,” he shouts, to the door open behind him, over and over, a broken record player's prayer.  
  
His tears fall cold, wet, on Adam's skin, force him to blink his eyes open again, but he doesn't want to. If he looks, Adam will get caught in Sam's trap, his cage, in the sad, sparkling pools that pit Sam's face, and Adam doesn't want that. If he looks, he'll hate his angel and wish he had loved a thunderbird, _this thunderbird_ , instead, because thunderbirds returned, roared, in spring each newborn year.  
  
Adam can't speak, so he thinks with all his strength, _“I made you up inside my head,”_ then shuts his eyes and all the world drops dead.

-

The End

-

**Author's Note:**

> ...I am an evil person. I'm so sorry.


End file.
